Anyone used servicemagic.com to bring in potential clients

Everytime I search the net for anything landscaping or lawn care I keep running into ServiceMagic.com

Apparently these guys link potential customers to service professionals in various industries.

I decided to give these guys a call today to find out what there all about, and apparently you pay a one time setup fee of $99.00 and then as customers request service professionals in their area they send you the referral.

At the time you receive the referral you have the option of accepting or denying the referral based on specific information that the customer is looking for. If you decide to accept the referral you are charged a $10.00 finders fee.
(The fees vary depending on the type of service, but fertilizer apps were $8.00 and lawn care was $10.00 etc.)

You are only charged one time per customer, so if the referral turns into a weekly account that you service year after year, then you're only into it for $10.00. (plus the original setup fee)

So my question is: Has anyone used this type of service to bring in clients and what type of results did you have.

For those of you that haven't used as service like this, would you consider doing it as a marketing option?

I think that most people in any area usually consult the yellow pages or newspaper first. At least I do. Takes to long to try to find what exactly your looking for in the vast thousands of service directories on the net.

I have run into service magic before while I was looking for other services. Seems like a never-ending process to fill in the forms etc .. they're asking you all kinds of questions to which you may not know the answers. I refer to things like that as a "snake handling." I'm just surprised they don't make you dance an Irish Jig in addition to all the forms etc.

When I accidentally run into Service Magic now, I just start closing the windows. It's a joke.

"We get leads from all sorts of places. We don't advertise any more except flyers. But even flyers we do very rarely.

We get a lot of calls off of our trucks. If you got a big maintenance business you better have some good lettering on them. Make sure the lettering and logo look the same on every truck and can be seen from a distance. It takes a while to establish a lot of name recognition but if you do it right it pays off.

We also get a lot of leads from referrals - from someone we did an install for in the past, current lawn care clients, other LCOs, our landscape designer, nurseries, friends, other contractors, etc. It's helps to network a lot. This is probably our biggest source of leads these days.

Finally, I really like ServiceMagic (.com) and Townpartner.com. They are producing some real good quality leads for us and the cost is affordable. We've landed some big jobs from each of those places."